A blog is a common feature of many modern websites. Whether writing about industry news, sharing best practices or updating customers on what’s been happening in the company, blogs can be used for publishing a wide range of content.
Blogs need to be updated regularly with value-adding content. This can be quite a task, especially if you don’t have an abundance of time on your hands to get it done. Therefore, many small businesses are often left wondering whether it is worth having a blog at all.
What is a Business Blog?
A business blog is a part of a brand’s website where content is published that helps educate the company’s target audience about their products or services. A blog is a marketing channel and is an essential part of a brand’s content marketing strategy in that it helps attract potential customers via search engine listings.
How to Get the Best Results From Your Blog
Consistency is Key
Consistently producing blog content helps build your thought leadership, subscriber list, and your inventory of content to promote on social media. Your readers come to trust the information you share when they see that you are continually adding value to your community of followers.
Blogging consistently is also crucial in building your domain authority. Following a good link building strategy, you will link your blog pages to your company solutions pages of your website. Other blogs will begin to link to your content, as well, if it’s authoritative and helpful. Over time, this web of links will build and Google will determine that your site is relevant and useful to searchers.
Use Keyword Research to Determine Topics
Keyword research will help you determine the topics that are relevant to your target audience, the questions they are searching in Google and other search engines, and the topics your competitors are writing about. Use keyword research to select topics that your customers want to read about, as well as topics that your competitors are not covering. Those content gaps are an opportunity for you to provide valuable content that answers common questions.
Use Images
Add professional, engaging images and infographics to your blog posts. And, blog articles with infographics get 12% more views. Images will also help your blog posts stand out when you and your followers share them on social.
It is not necessary to have a graphic designer or photo researcher in order to create an attractive and fitting visual. You can also use free stock images for this purpose. What’s important when selecting an image for the blog post is to make sure that it fits the content of the article and is not cut out on smaller screens.
Remember to add alt text to your images when you upload them, Google image search is on the rise and alt text will help your images surface in searches.
Amplify Your Content
Content creation is not a one and done event. You want to use your blog content to expand your reach and build your brand visibility. Get extra mileage out of your blog content using these tactics:
- Share your articles on your social channels
- Repurpose your blog articles into videos
- Reach out to the sources you included in your articles and ask them to share on social
- Create pdfs with highlights of data from your article and post them as pdf carousels on LinkedIn
- Combine several blog articles on a similar topic into an eBook, available for download
- Add structured data to your blog articles to help search engines understand your content
The Advantages of Writing a Blog
Blogging is a great way to create regular fresh content. Perfect for boosting your SEO. But a blog has more benefits than just increasing your Google ranking.
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Increase organic traffic to your website
As we’ve just mentioned, by posting regular content you will be easier to find on Google. Therefore, creating opportunities to attract new customers.
The more fresh content you upload to your website, the more brownie points you will score with Google’s little Internet-crawling spiders. Happy spiders mean more visibility for your site.
Equally, the fact that there is physically more content to find means you are more likely to be found. Especially when it comes to long-tail search queries – those where the query is more specific.
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Strengthens your authority in your industry
Writing thoughtful articles on appropriate topics helps to highlight yourself as an expert in your field. It will encourage people to see your company as trustworthy. In time, you could become the go-to resource for whatever it is you specialise in.
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Humanises your brand
The personality of your brand is really important. It is what makes you different from your competitors. Having a brand personality that matches yours will make sure that you attract your ideal customers.
Having a blog is perfect for getting your brand personality across. It allows you to talk about topics and issues important to your business in a way that your customers will understand. Whether that is in full technical detail, or simplifying a subject down for a wider audience.
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Perfect content for sharing
It goes without saying that social media forms an important part of the marketing strategy for most modern businesses. It can be hard to regularly come up with engaging content. This is where your blog comes in. Share it on your social media channels and reach an even wider audience.
In doing so, you will increase your brand awareness too. Which can only be a good thing!
By writing engaging articles you may spark conversations with your followers. This helps to build solid relationships and loyal customers.
So, is it worth having a blog on your company website?
The simple answer? Yes, absolutely. The benefits you can reap from writing, and maintaining, a company blog are huge.
Just remember, it is not worth having a blog if you’re not going to maintain it.
